Upon a proposal by Gatien Du Bois, the Irish artist Niamh McCann has invested the V2Vingt space with a work that interweaves references to cinema, architecture and history. McCann – currently in residency at the Penthouse Art Residency – draws together different reference points and distils them into a kind of sculptural poetry.

The starting point of Laboratoire: Gallery 20’ is to be found in the film The Black Cat, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer in 1934. The central character of this horror movie is the worrisome Hjalmar Poelzig, an Austrian architect. His name is inspired by a person with whom Edgar G. Ulmer has always claimed to have collaborated with: Hans Poelzig, the Jewish German architect, painter and scenographer to whom we owe the huge legendary building of IG Farben in Frankfurt. This architectural complex was built for the administration of this conglomerate which, during the Second World War, participated in the German war effort by producing many chemicals including Zyklon B extermination gas. Through this evolving project McCann is becoming increasingly fascinated with the relation between monuments, the constructed landscape and negotiating the complex narrative of self.Works at V2Vingt are a laboratory for works to be shown in the The City Gallery Hugh Lane, Dublin October 2018.

McCann’s interest is in the interweaving of fact and fiction, the overlapping layers of history and fable that are contained within the cultural and physical structures we construct. Laboratoire: Gallery 20’ probes the role of the architectural trope and the sociological and political environment as iconic moments. The artist is interested in objects becoming the palimpsest of disparate influences and idealisms removed from original incarnation by time; layered repositories of various narratives and meanings. These explorations take the form of concise built-objects that materialize through multiple mediums.

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OPENING: Friday 26th of January from 6 PM

CLOSING EVENT: Saturday 17th of February from 6 PM, screening of the film « The Black Cat » (1934, Edgar G. Ulmer) at 7 PM

Address:V2Vingt, 22-20 rue Vanderlinden, 1030 Schaerbeek, 5th floor

This exhibition is supported by the Penthouse Art Residency (Hotel BLOOM! & Harlan Levey Projects). The artist received funding from the Arts Council of Ireland for her residency in Brussels.

About the artist

Niamh McCann is an Irish Artist based in Dublin. She is the recipient of various Arts Council of Ireland awards, and residencies at Cemeti Arthouse, Indonesia; HIAP, International Artists’ Residency, Cable Factory, Helsinki, Finland; URRA Artist Residency, Argentina; Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Ireland; and of Perspective and EV+A exhibition awards.

Recent solo exhibitions include La Perruque (Protest Song) at MAC Belfast and Just Left of Copernicus in Visual Carlow. Group exhibitions include Future Perfect, Rubicon-Projects Brussels, Belgium, Changing States: Contemporary Art and Francis Bacon’s Studio, BOZAR, Belgium, Time Out of Mind: Works from the IMMA Collection, Twenty at the Irish Museum of Modern Art; In Other Words at Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork; This little bag of dreams, Catherine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, and Without-Boundaries, Wäinö Attonen, Museum of Art, Finland.

Her work is represented in various collections: Irish Museum of Modern Art, the OPW, Limerick City Gallery, Swansea City Council, The London Institute, Hiscox Collection (London).

About the exhibition space

Initiated by visual artist Laurent Jourquin in 2017, V2Vingt is a contemporary art space measuring 10.25 meters by 4.10 meters, which hosts exhibitions throughout the year. This space is located on the 5th floor of a building complex, part of which used to be a warehouse for the Grand Bazar located on the Anspach boulevard (and designed in 1920 by architect Victor Horta) while other parts of the building complex were built in 1884 by the Compagnie belge-américaine pour la Fabrication de Savons. V2Vingt supports the artists with whom it collaborates. This support is reflected in the availability of its space, exhibition material, logistical support, virtual communication and dialogue with the actors of the art world.